How to keep bees for profit/Chapter 9

IN the keeping of bees, there are many
occasions when extra queens are required,
notably when colonies from one cause
or another become queenless, or when increase
is made, and the general practice is to
send away to a queen-breeder for the same.
While in the majority of cases queens arrive
in good condition, and apparently none the
worse for their journey, yet some beemen have
contended that the queen is hurt more or less
from her journey and is not as good as before.
Again, it costs a considerable sum to buy
queens, especially if a large number are required,
and, as they can be raised at home
at a ridiculously low figure, the matter of expense
has induced an ever increasing number
of beekeepers to rear their own queens, as
they are able to breed from only their best
specimens, whose offspring have shown remarkable
qualities of gentleness, and are great
honey-gatherers. With the advent of a number
of new systems of queen-rearing, which will be
explained, one can easily see that this part of
the profession is not so mysterious as some will
suppose, and with a little experience the novice
will soon be able to raise as good queens as the
professional breeder, and not be compelled to
pay from $1 to $3 apiece for them.
If left to follow their own natural impulses,
the bees would build only a limited number of
cells at the swarming time, but by the use of
a few simple and inexpensive appliances, the
beekeeper is able to rear them in almost unlimited
numbers and thus always have them
at hand when needed.

It is a known fact that in the breeding of all
kinds of stock, the quality can be greatly
improved by selection and restriction in the
specimens that are to reproduce their kind,
and bees are no exception to the rule. By
breeding queens only from best mothers, the
beekeeper will be able in a short time to secure
a strain of bees in his apiaries that will be
marvels of gentleness, to say nothing of gathering
record crops of honey.

A good many apiarists advocate the requeening
of all colonies with young queens of
the season's breeding, as this insures every
colony beginning the next season with vigorous
young queens able to produce a large
amount of brood, and such colonies are not
so liable to swarm as those with old queens at
their head.

There are three natural conditions under
which colonies will of themselves raise queens,
such as : at the time of swarming, when made
queenless, and when about to supersede an
old queen that is worn out. When about to
swarm, the bees will begin to build a number
of queen cells, usually at the bottoms of the
combs, and in many instances the queen will
deposit eggs in them for this purpose. While
these cells are of the very best, yet the fact
that they have to be cut out of the combs in
order to isolate them in cages, has led to the
adoption of little wooden cups in which eggs
are grafted by the beekeeper, by which means
they can the more easily be handled without
the danger of injuring their occupants, as will
be described later.

When a queen begins to show signs of failing
through old age or injury, the colony will
at once begin to build cells, and when the
young queen begins to lay, the bees will usually
kill the old one. If a colony has its queen
taken from them, or should she be killed
through the careless handling of the frames
by the beekeeper, the colony will also build
cells in order to replace her, and under the
conditions outlined above will build from five
to fifteen cells, though in the case of Carniolans
and Cyprians colonies will often build as
many as fifty cells at a time. While the cells
reared by the bees under normal conditions
are the very best, yet their production is
uncertain, and does not always occur when the
beekeeper needs them, and this has led to the
almost universal adoption of artificial methods.
As far as is known, such queens are equal to
those reared at the pleasure of the colony.

Nursery case for queens and virgins.
Perhaps the best system in vogue is the
Swarthmore System, originated by the late
E. R. Pratt of Swarthmore, Pennsylvania,
and, with the few inexpensive appliances purchasable
at almost any supply house, one can
raise as many queens as are needed. This
system requires a number of little wooden
cell cups which are filled with melted beeswax,
and with a small hand press made for the
purpose, the rudimentary of the queen cell
is made.

Into each one of these little cell cups a
larva must be placed, and a small piece of
wire is made for this purpose.
While a colony will accept these little cells,
and supply the larvae with the necessary food,
yet it is best to make a colony queenless
several days before the larvae are grafted, and
from the natural cells a small quantity of the
royal jelly can be placed in each wooden cup
with the grafted larvae, as the bees more
readily start on such cells than on those that
are not so supplied.

The larva is taken from the worker cells
of the colony from whose queen you desire to
rear queens, and must be not more than about
three days old, as such larvae alone can be
depended upon for good queens. If you
secure a larva that is only a day old, so much
the better, and in lifting it from the worker
cell in the comb to the artificial cup, use great
care not to bruise it, as it is very tender. The
age of the larva can be easily determined by
its size, and the smaller it is the better.
Before you are ready to graft cells, make
your swarm box ready ; the Swarthmore
swarm box is a box that has the bottom side
covered with wire gauze and holds just five
frames of comb. About ten o'clock in the
morning, go to some strong colony, and, having
previously placed in the box three combs
filled with honey and pollen, but no brood,
lift the lid from the box and shake into it the
bees from three or four frames taken from the
strong colony, put the lid on securely, and
stop the entrance with a large cork or piece
of wood. Remove the box, bees and all, to
the house, and place it in a dark, quiet place,
moderately warm, and wait until about four
o'clock in the afternoon before you begin tc
graft the larvae.

During this time the imprisoned bees will
discover that they are hopelessly queenless,
as there is no brood present from which they
can raise one, and it is this condition that induces
them to accept the queen cups you give
them and work on them at once.

The top of the swarm box is so cut out that
a couple of cell bars are fitted to it, and in each
of these bars are sixteen little waxed cups which
close the holes, and in which you will place the
transferred larvae, about four o'clock. At four
o'clock, go to some colony whose queen is a
choice one and lift out a frame that has a lot
of larvae not over three days old, shake off all the bees,
and carry it to the house. See that the room in which you are
to do the grafting is heated to at least eighty
degrees so as not to chill the larvae when grafted.
Lift out one of the cell cups and place a dummy
cell cup in the hole it occupied in the cell bar,
Cutting open a cell taken from the colony that
was made queenless to rear them, transfer a little
royal jelly to the base of the artificial cell, stir
it a trifle with the little metal spoon, and then
with the wire grafting needle, gently lift a
tiny grub or larva from the frame of the brood
at hand, place it in the bottom of the cup right
in the midst of the royal jelly, and put it in the
hole occupied by the dummy cup. Proceed
in like manner with the other cups, and when
all have been attended to, the frame of the
brood can be returned to the colony from which
it was taken.

Now cover the swarm box with a blanket
for warmth, and leave it in a warm room until
the following morning, and when, on the
morrow, you lift out a cup to examine it, you
will be surprised to find that the imprisoned
bees will have accepted the majority of larvae
given them and will have fed them liberal
allowances of royal jelly, and will have buili
down the cell to nearly an inch in length.

As soon as the little cells have been started,
they should be given to some strong colony
to complete. Formerly, the custom was to
make a colony queenless before grafting cells,
and to give the started cells to that colony to
complete, but since we now have the little
incubating cages, and perforated zinc queenexcluders,
we are able to give the started cells
to a queenright colony for completion, as the
zinc allows the workers free access to the cells,
and at the same time excludes the queen from
destroying them. If your colonies are occupying
but one body for the brood nest, it will be
necessary to use a holding frame fitted with an
incubating cage in its top; this frame can be
placed in the centre of any strong colony having
a queen, the cell bar holding sixteen of the
started cells can be slipped into the top of the
cage, and the frame put in place in a strong
colony. In about ten days the cells will be
all sealed over and ready to be transferred to
individual cages in which each virgin will
hatch by herself and be safe from being destroyed,
as would be the case if they were ah
permitted to hatch in one compartment. If
the colony to which the cells have been given
for completion is a strong one, and is occupying
two brood bodies one above the other, it
will be a very simple matter to place the queen
down in the lower brood body, and between
it and the upper story a queen-excluding zinc,
which keeps her below; in this case as many
as three bars of cells can be given to the upper
story, each bar being put in the holding frame
without the incubator cage.

When the cells are about twelve days old
from the time the egg was laid, remove them,
and put each one by itself in one of the little
nursery cages. As many as forty-eight of these
little cages can be secured firmly in an empty
frame, and the frame given back to the strong
colony to keep warm until the virgin queens
shall hatch, which will be in sixteen days
from the time the eggs were laid.
There is a little compartment in each of the
nursery cages in which should be placed a
small quantity of candy made from mixing
pulverized sugar with honey until it makes a
stiff dough, so that the virgins will be provided
with food when they emerge, in case the
bees refuse to feed them through the wire netting,
which they often do.

After the cells are completed, the only thing
the bees do for the cell is to maintain the
proper temperature of about ninety-eight
degrees, and again and again I have hatched
choice queens in an ordinary chicken incubator
by keeping it at the required temperature.
The cells taken care of by the bees, however,
show a larger percentage of hatch, as the bees
will gnaw the ends of the cells given to their
care until they are as thin as paper, which is
a great aid to the virgin in getting out.
Going back to the time of taking the cells
from the swarm box, after the cells are removed,
the imprisoned bees can be shaken
at the entrance of the hive from which they
were taken, and they are glad indeed to join
their fellows. By the Doolittle Method, the
breeder has to make his own cells by dipping
a wooden rake tooth in melted wax, and sticking
it to a bar of wood with more or less danger
of its becoming detached, and it is difficult
to handle such cells individually.

The Swarthmore System is superior to
either the Alley or the Doolittle System, as
they compel the queen-rearer to permit the
bees to start the cells on a strip of brood comb
under the Alley Method, and the objection to
this is that there is more or less risk in injuring
the queens when cutting the cells from
the combs, to say nothing of the nuisance of
having each cell all ragged at its top in handling.
The Swarthmore plan has every advantage,
as each cell is fastened in a little wooden
cup, and can even be handled roughly without
fear of injury, and as for cell-starting, it is
more convenient than any other system.
Now that your virgins have been hatched,
the next thing is to mate them, and the small
mating-box does this effectually, and does
away with the old method of having to use a
full colony for each queen mated. Virgins
may be given to a queenless colony and
allowed to mate from them, but great care
will have to be exercised in introducing them,
as a colony will not accept them as readily as a
queen that has mated and begun to lay.
Then again if the beekeeper is rearing queens
with which to supply the trade, the demand
is for mated and laying queens, and it becomes
a necessity to have them mated before being
sold.

The best mating-box is the Root twin
mating-box, which is so divided in the centre
that each compartment contains two small
combs that have been built in a strong colony;
and as there are two small entrances to the
box, each little nucleus of bees has the spirit of
a colony.

When the virgins have hatched, take the
small mating-boxes to a strong colony, and into
each compartment of the mating-box brush
about a teacupful of bees, being careful not to
secure the queen; securely close the entrance
of each compartment and remove the imprisoned
bees to a shady place. About four
in the afternoon run a virgin in at the entrance
to each compartment, and if the bees were
shaken in about ten o'clock in the morning,
fully realizing their queenlessness, they will
gladly accept her. Toward night, the entrance
can be opened, and in the morning you
will find that the miniature colony will have
the spirit of a full colony, with their sentinels
posted at the tiny entrance. In a few days
the virgin will fly from this box and mate, and
when you find that she has begun to lay, she
can be used or sold as an untested queen.
An untested queen is one that has mated
and begun to lay, and can be sold as a tested
queen only after she has been kept laying long
enough for some of her eggs to have hatched ;
and if the young bees prove by their markings
that their mother has been purely mated, then
she can be said to be a tested queen.

These little nuclei need encouraging, and
it will be necessary to feed them a smali
quantity of syrup every other day in the little
feeders that are a part of the hive. The
syrup should be made of equal parts of hot
water and granulated sugar.

Many queen-rearers, when they put a virgin
into the mating-boxes, also put another
A queen's egg under the microscope.
in on its floor, imprisoned in its nursery cage
so that it soon acquires the odor of the little
nucleus. When the first virgin has mated
and is removed, the caged virgin can be liberated
at once, for the bees will accept her, as
she jba the proper odor. This procedure
can be carried on all through the season, a
caged virgin being placed in each compartment
as soon as a mated queen is sold and
anotl er virgin liberated.

At the close of the season these little swarms
can be brushed into some weak colony that
has been well smoked, or several of them can
be united and given to a queenless colony and
a queen provided, and the little boxes set
away for use the following year.
Just a word of caution : Don't begin queen
rearing too early in the season, or else you will
fail. Wait until fruit bloom, when the wreather
is warm and the bees are flying nicely, and
if you should need queens for your own use
before it is time to rear them, remember that
the better plan is to secure them by mail from
some southern breeder whose warmer climate
enables him to start breeding before it is possible
in the North.

The next thing is to introduce a queen to a
colony that needs one, and whether the queen
to be introduced is one of your own raising or
has come by mail from a distant breeder, the
method is the same. The queen to be introduced
is enclosed in a small introducing or
mailing cage, and one end of the cage is filled
with the honey dough previously described.
Open the hive to which she is to be introduced,
and after tearing away the little piece of wire
or paper that covers the hole to the compartment
where the dough is stored, pry apart a
couple of frames in the centre of the queenless
colony and slip the cage with the queen in it
down between them with the candy side down,
and leave the colony undisturbed for three or
four days.

During this time the queen will be acquiring
the odor of the colony, and the wall of
candy will prevent the bees from getting at her
to kill her, which they would do if they could
the first day or so, but by the time the bees
have eaten their way through to her and
made a passage for her to get out, she will
usually have become so impregnated with the
odor of the colony that they will accept her.
In rare cases, however, they will destroy her,
and sometimes even if they do not do this, they
are sullen about accepting her, and will upon
your opening the hive "ball her," in which case
you will find a large ball of angry bees, trying
to kill her; but this can be broken up at
once by filling the smoker with tobacco and
sending clouds of tobacco smoke through the
hive and at the cluster, and this seems to have
the effect of making them all smell alike, thus
averting all further trouble.

Every colony has its distinctive odor, and
it is by this the bees recognize each other, as
well as their queen, and the reason we cannot
liberate a strange queen at once is that she has
an odor from the hive or mating box from
which she was taken; for this reason we are
compelled to let her hang in the colony to
which she is introduced for a few days until
she has the odor of her new home. It may
seem strange, but you can take a laying queen
from her bees and hold her in your hand for
a few minutes, and, when you will put her
back in her regular hive the bees will ball her
at once, thinking she is a strange queen simply
because of her contact with your hand, and
the odor she derives from it.

Whether you keep few colonies or many,
make it a point to raise some queens if only
for the fun of the thing, for it is intensely interesting
work; and should you need a large
number of queens as your colonies increase, it
will prove a considerable saving to raise them
yourself.

Those of us who keep a large number of
colonies know that every year or so we find
that we have a queen of rare worth, whose offspring
are beautifully marked, remarkably
gentle, and as honey-gatherers are hustlers, and
it pays to breed from this queen, and in time
make all the bees of this strain.